Famous Streets in Hanoi: 20 Streets You Shouldn’t Miss

The famous streets in Hanoi are not just addresses, they are job descriptions that stuck for 600 years. This guide walks you through the 20 streets that best explain the city: what each one sells, what it smells like, and the exact hour to arrive so you see it working rather than sleeping. Everything below comes from club volunteers who walk these blocks every single week.

What are the Most Famous Streets in Hanoi?

The most famous streets in Hanoi are Hang Bac, Hang Gai, Hang Ma, Ta Hien, Phung Hung, Nha Tho, Trang Tien and Phan Dinh Phung. Between them they cover silver, silk, festival paper, beer, murals, cathedral cafés, ice cream and the city’s prettiest tree tunnel. Nineteen of the twenty below sit within a 25-minute walk of each other.

Here is the whole list in one place, so you can screenshot it and stop scrolling.

#	Street	Famous for	Best time to go	Zone
1	Hang Bac	Silversmiths, 600 years of them	9:00 to 11:00 AM	Old Quarter
2	Hang Gai	Silk, tailoring, scarves	10:00 AM to 5:00 PM	Old Quarter
3	Hang Ma	Festival paper, lanterns, votives	3 weeks before any festival	Old Quarter
4	Lan Ong	Herbal medicine, cinnamon, anise	8:00 to 11:00 AM	Old Quarter
5	Hang Quat	Altars, funeral flags, red and gold	Any daylight hour	Old Quarter
6	Hang Thiec	Tin and sheet metal, live hammering	8:00 to 11:00 AM	Old Quarter
7	Hang Buom	Old Chinese quarter, Bach Ma Temple	5:00 to 9:00 PM	Old Quarter
8	Hang Dao & Hang Duong	Clothes, o mai fruit, night market	Fri to Sun, 7:00 PM	Old Quarter
9	Hang Chieu & O Quan Chuong	Sedge mats, the last city gate	7:00 to 9:00 AM	Old Quarter
10	Ta Hien	Bia hoi, plastic stools, the crossroads	7:00 to 9:30 PM	Nightlife
11	Dao Duy Tu	Bars along the old city wall line	8:00 PM onwards	Nightlife
12	Tong Duy Tan & Cam Chi	Late-night food alleys	8:00 PM to midnight	Nightlife
13	Nha Tho	St Joseph’s Cathedral, cafés	4:00 to 6:00 PM	Cathedral
14	Ly Quoc Su	Pho, a pagoda, quiet	7:00 to 9:00 AM	Cathedral
15	Trang Tien	Bookshops, ice cream, Opera House	5:00 to 7:00 PM	French Quarter
16	Phan Dinh Phung	Tamarind trees, colonial villas	6:00 to 8:00 AM	Ba Dinh
17	Hoang Dieu & Dien Bien Phu	Villas, Citadel, Flag Tower	7:00 to 9:00 AM	Ba Dinh
18	Phung Hung Mural Street	19 painted railway arches	7:00 to 8:30 AM	Old Quarter edge
19	Hanoi Book Street (19/12)	Bookshops in a covered alley	9:00 AM to 6:00 PM	French Quarter
20	Trinh Cong Son Walking Street	Weekend street by West Lake	Fri to Sun evening	Tay Ho

Why Do So Many Famous Streets in Hanoi Start With “Hang”?

“Hang” means “merchandise”, so the name is a label for what was sold there: Hang Bac is silver, Hang Gai is silk, Hang Thiec is tin. For a walker, that single fact does all the work. If you can read the name, you can predict the shopfront, and the Hanoi Old Quarter streets stop feeling like a maze.

The full story of how the guilds formed, why the number 36 is symbolic rather than literal, and what all twenty-odd street names translate to is covered in depth in our dedicated guide to the Hanoi 36 Streets. This article is about what those streets are doing right now, and when to show up.

The 9 Most Famous Streets in Hanoi’s Old Quarter

The Old Quarter trade streets are the historic core of the famous streets in Hanoi, and nine of them still sell something close to their original product. You can walk all nine in about 90 minutes without rushing. Mornings are best, because workshops open early and close their shutters by late afternoon.

1. Hang Bac Street: Silver Street

Hang Bac has been the silversmiths’ street for roughly 600 years, and it still is. Silversmiths from Chau Khe village were summoned here to mint coinage for the court, and their descendants never left.

Walk it around 9:30 AM and you will hear tapping from the back of narrow shops as rings and clasps are shaped by hand. The street also holds the Golden Bell Theatre, a working venue for cai luong (reformed opera), plus some of the best-preserved tube houses in the quarter. Prices vary wildly, so ask whether a piece is 925 sterling or plated before you fall in love with it.

2. Hang Gai Street: Silk Street

Hang Gai is Hanoi’s silk and tailoring street, and it is also where most visitors accidentally buy polyester. The name literally means “hemp street”, but silk took over generations ago.

Real mulberry silk feels cool for a second then warms to your skin, drapes heavily, and costs what it costs. A 50,000 VND “silk” scarf is not silk. Reputable shops will happily do a burn test on a loose thread: real silk smells like burnt hair and crumbles to ash, while polyester melts into a hard bead and smells like plastic. Tailors here can turn around a shirt in 48 hours if you commit early in your trip.

3. Hang Ma Street: The Street That Changes Costume

Hang Ma sells paper: votive offerings, lanterns, decorations, and anything else that gets burned, hung or waved. It is the single most photogenic block in the quarter, and it redecorates itself completely four times a year.

Expect blood-red and gold in the weeks before Tet, star lanterns and masks before Mid-Autumn, tinsel before Christmas, and a genuinely chaotic Halloween aisle in October. The trick is timing: arrive two to three weeks before a festival, when stock is at its fullest and the crowds have not yet arrived. During Tet, the neighbouring Hang Luoc flower market spills into the same lanes.

4. Lan Ong Street: The Street You Smell First

Lan Ong is the traditional herbal medicine street, and you will smell it before you see the sign. Cinnamon bark, star anise, dried liquorice, ginseng and a dozen roots you cannot identify are stacked in open sacks along both pavements.

The street is named after Hai Thuong Lan Ong, the 18th-century physician who is essentially the patron saint of Vietnamese medicine. It was historically a Chinese-Vietnamese trading block, which explains the guild hall architecture tucked between the shops. Go on a dry morning: humidity dulls the smell, and the smell is the entire point.

5. Hang Quat Street: Altars and Funeral Flags

Hang Quat once sold fans (“quat” means fan) and now sells everything a Vietnamese household needs for ancestor worship: lacquered altars, incense burners, ceremonial banners and funeral flags. The colour palette is relentless red and gold.

Photographers love it because the shopfronts are narrow, deep and stacked floor to ceiling, so any frame you shoot has depth. Be respectful: these are religious objects, not props, and a nod to the owner before you raise a camera goes a long way. It is a 200-metre street you can genuinely spend 30 minutes on.

6. Hang Thiec Street: The Tin Street

Hang Thiec is the loudest of the famous streets in Hanoi, because tinsmiths still hammer sheet metal by hand at the front of their shops. Buckets, ducting, mirror frames, lanterns and steel boxes are cut and folded while you watch.

The hammering starts around 7:30 AM and thins out after lunch. It is one of the last streets where the craft has not been outsourced to a factory on the ring road, and volunteers often bring visitors here specifically to make the point that the guild system is not a museum exhibit. Ear-splitting, slightly dangerous, completely alive.

7. Hang Buom Street: The Old Chinese Quarter

Hang Buom means “sail street” and was the heart of Hanoi’s Chinese merchant community for centuries. Today it is a food street by night and a heritage street by day.

Two stops matter. Bach Ma Temple at number 76 is the oldest temple in the Old Quarter and worth ten minutes inside. A few doors down, the former Quang Dong Guild Hall at number 22 has been restored into a cultural space. After 6:00 PM the same pavement fills with grilled skewers, banh mi and beer.

8. Hang Dao & Hang Duong: The Night Market Spine

Hang Dao and Hang Duong form the central artery of the Old Quarter, running north from Hoan Kiem Lake toward Dong Xuan Market. Hang Dao was the pink-silk dyeing street; Hang Duong was the sugar street.

Today Hang Dao sells clothing and Hang Duong sells o mai, Hanoi’s addictive salted-and-sugared preserved fruit, which is the best souvenir nobody tells you about. From Friday to Sunday evening the whole stretch closes to traffic and becomes the Hanoi weekend night market, running north to Dong Xuan Market. For street-shopping specifically, arrive by 7:00 PM: the stalls are set and the crush has not started.

9. Hang Chieu & O Quan Chuong: Where the Old Quarter Ends

Hang Chieu sells sedge mats, rope and bamboo blinds, and it ends at O Quan Chuong, the last surviving gate of Hanoi’s old city wall. This is the physical edge of the historic quarter.

Walk Hang Chieu itself slowly. It is one of the few streets where the original trade is still stacked in plain sight on the pavement, rolled mats leaning against every doorway, and it takes about four minutes end to end. Photograph the gate at 7:00 AM, when light comes through the arch and the motorbike flow is still thin enough to see the brickwork.

Famous Streets in Hanoi for Beer, Street Food and Nightlife

Three streets carry Hanoi’s night: Ta Hien for beer, Dao Duy Tu for bars, and the Tong Duy Tan and Cam Chi pair for late food. All three sit within 400 metres of each other, which is either convenient or dangerous depending on your plans.

10. Ta Hien Street: The Beer Corner

Ta Hien is the intersection where the whole city seems to end up after 8:00 PM, sitting on plastic stools drinking bia hoi, fresh draught beer brewed daily and sold for roughly 15,000 to 25,000 VND a glass. It is the most famous 100 metres of nightlife in northern Vietnam.

Here is how it actually works: you sit, someone brings beer without much ceremony, you order snacks separately (nem chua ran, grilled skewers, peanuts), and you pay at the end. Prices are usually posted, and if they are not, ask before ordering. The sweet spot is 7:00 to 9:30 PM; after that it becomes shoulder-to-shoulder and the stools migrate into the road.

11. Dao Duy Tu Street: The Old Wall Turned Bar Street

Dao Duy Tu runs along the line of the old city rampart and is now a strip of bars, hostels and late-night noise connecting Ta Hien to O Quan Chuong. It is where the crowd drifts when Ta Hien fills up.

The street is worth a slow daytime walk too. You can still read the shape of the vanished wall in how the buildings line up, and there are a couple of quiet cafés that open onto the same pavement that goes feral at 10:00 PM. A genuinely two-faced street.

12. Tong Duy Tan & Cam Chi: The Food Alleys After Dark

Tong Duy Tan and neighbouring Cam Chi alley are where Hanoi eats late. Tong Duy Tan is the wider, officially designated food street, known for ga tan (chicken stewed in herbs) and hot pot. Cam Chi is a genuinely narrow alley stacked with mien luon, bun cha and grilled everything.

Both stay open far later than the Old Quarter norm, which makes them the answer to “I landed at 10:30 PM and I am starving”. Cam Chi in particular has almost no tourist signage, which is exactly why volunteers like taking people there.

Famous Streets in Hanoi Beyond the Old Quarter

Five streets south and west of the Old Quarter show a completely different city: French planning, wide pavements, tamarind trees and villas. These are the famous streets in Hanoi that photograph beautifully and feel about 20 degrees calmer.

13. Nha Tho Street (Church Street)

Nha Tho is the short café street running straight at the neo-Gothic facade of St Joseph’s Cathedral, completed in 1886. It is the most reliably charming 200 metres in the city centre.

The street is lined with boutiques, tailors and cafés with upstairs balconies aimed directly at the cathedral. Order a tra chanh (lemon iced tea) from one of the corner stalls, sit on a low stool, and watch the 5:00 PM light hit the stone. On Sundays and major Catholic holidays the square in front fills with congregants, which is worth seeing but not worth blocking.

14. Ly Quoc Su Street

Ly Quoc Su is the quiet street behind the cathedral, and it holds two things: a very good bowl of pho and a very old pagoda. It is the decompression chamber of the neighbourhood.

Pho Ly Quoc Su is one of the city’s best-known pho houses, busiest between 7:00 and 9:00 AM. A few doors away, Ly Trieu Quoc Su Pagoda honours a 12th-century monk-physician and is usually near-empty in the morning. Two stops, one street, fifteen minutes.

15. Trang Tien Street

Trang Tien is the French Quarter’s showpiece boulevard, running from Hoan Kiem Lake to the Hanoi Opera House. It is Hanoi’s bookshop street and its ice cream street at the same time.

Kem Trang Tien has been selling ice cream on sticks since 1958, and locals still queue standing up at the counter rather than sitting down, which is half the fun. Walk east past the bookshops, cross to Trang Tien Plaza, and finish at the Opera House, a 1911 building modelled loosely on the Palais Garnier. Twenty minutes end to end, best at dusk.

16. Phan Dinh Phung Street

Phan Dinh Phung is widely voted Hanoi’s most beautiful street, a wide boulevard shaded by enormous cay sau (dracontomelon) trees with yellow-ochre colonial villas behind them. It is the photograph everyone comes home with.

Go between 6:00 and 8:00 AM. Later the light flattens and the wedding-photo shoots take over every good angle. At the western end sits Cua Bac Church, a 1930s building that blends Art Deco with Vietnamese roof lines. Autumn, roughly October to November, is peak season for the leaf colour.

17. Hoang Dieu & Dien Bien Phu: The Villa Streets

Hoang Dieu and Dien Bien Phu are the two grand tree-lined avenues of Ba Dinh, lined with government villas and framing the Imperial Citadel of Thang Long, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. This is the most formal, least commercial corner of central Hanoi.

Walk the pair as a loop with the Flag Tower as your anchor. There is almost no street food and very few shops, which is precisely the appeal after three days in the Old Quarter. Weekend mornings are quietest.

Art, Books and Weekend-Only Famous Streets in Hanoi

The last three are modern inventions: two public-space projects and one weekend pedestrian street. They are proof that the list of famous streets in Hanoi is still being written.

18. Phung Hung Mural Street

Phung Hung Mural Street is a run of painted arches beneath the old railway viaduct, turning roughly 200 metres of dead concrete into an open-air gallery. It opened in February 2018 as a Vietnamese and Korean collaboration backed by the Korea Foundation and UN-Habitat.

The murals show scenes Hanoians actually remember: the subsidy-era public water tap with its queue, an old motorbike shop, Hang Ma at Mid-Autumn, a schoolgirl on a bicycle. Some are painted in forced perspective so you can step into them. Arrive between 7:00 and 8:30 AM, because by 10:00 AM every arch has a photoshoot in it.

19. Hanoi Book Street (Pho Sach 19/12)

Hanoi Book Street is a covered pedestrian lane of bookshops and cafés running between Hai Ba Trung and Ly Thuong Kiet streets. It opened in 2017 and is one of the few genuinely quiet public spaces in the centre.

Its history is heavier than its atmosphere suggests. The lane sits on the site of the former 19/12 market, itself built over ground connected to the December 1946 outbreak of the resistance war. Most stock is Vietnamese, but several shops carry English-language books on Hanoi and Vietnamese history, which makes it a smart first-day stop.

20. Trinh Cong Son Walking Street

Trinh Cong Son Walking Street is Tay Ho’s weekend pedestrian street, a short, leafy road near West Lake named after Vietnam’s most beloved songwriter. It runs Friday through Sunday evening.

Expect live music, food stalls, families and a distinctly local crowd, because it sits well outside the tourist core. Pair it with a sunset walk along the West Lake causeway and dinner at one of the Tay Ho bun cha places. This is where Hanoians go when they want a night out without the Old Quarter crowds.

Which Famous Streets in Hanoi Should You Pick for Your Interests?

Pick by what you actually want out of an hour, not by proximity. The famous streets in Hanoi are close enough together that distance is rarely the deciding factor; the deciding factor is whether you want noise or quiet, craft or coffee, morning or night. This table is how our volunteers triage the question when a guest has one free afternoon.

If you want…	Go to	Then add
Craftsmen actually working	Hang Thiec, Hang Bac	Hang Quat for the shopfronts
To buy something worth carrying home	Hang Gai (silk), Hang Duong (o mai)	Hang Bac for silver
Colour and festival chaos	Hang Ma	Hang Luoc during Tet week
Photographs with no crowds	Phan Dinh Phung, Hoang Dieu	Phung Hung before 8:30 AM
Quiet and shade	Book Street, Ly Quoc Su	Dien Bien Phu
Coffee and people-watching	Nha Tho, Trang Tien	Any Nha Tho balcony at 5:00 PM
To eat until you regret it	Hang Buom, Tong Duy Tan	Cam Chi alley after 10:00 PM
A drink with strangers	Ta Hien	Dao Duy Tu when Ta Hien fills
To escape the tourist core entirely	Trinh Cong Son, Tay Ho	Weekend evenings only

Two rules cut across all of them:

• Craft streets are a morning proposition, because shutters come down by mid-afternoon and the whole point is watching people work.
• Food and drink streets are an evening proposition and are genuinely dull before 6:00 PM. Midday, roughly 12:00 to 2:00, belongs to lunch and shade.

If you would rather hand the sequencing to someone else, our hanoi old quarter walking tour covers the craft-street cluster with a student guide who can translate the shopkeeper conversations. For a full timed day plan including markets, temples and the lake, see our Hanoi Old Town itinerary guide.

What Should You Know Before Walking the Famous Streets in Hanoi?

Two things specific to these streets are worth knowing, and neither appears on most maps. Everything else about getting around, crossing the road and budgeting is in our Hanoi Old Town travel guide.

• Your map may name a district that no longer exists: Since 1 July 2025, Vietnam moved to a two-tier system and the district level was dissolved, so what guidebooks call “Hoan Kiem District” is now officially Hoan Kiem Ward. Every street name on this list is unchanged and drivers understand both, so it changes nothing practical. It is simply the kind of detail that tells a local you have been paying attention.
• Train Street is not on this list on purpose: Access to the track-side cafés along Ngo 224 Le Duan and the Phung Hung stretch has been restricted, and enforcement comes and goes without notice. Do not build an afternoon around it, and do not walk past a barrier if one is up. There are twenty better-behaved streets above.

FAQs About the Famous Streets in Hanoi